Irish people are still rather rare at IUB. In fact I'm still the only one on campus. I was born and grew up in Dublin where my primary education was mostly at a state school where like everyone else at the time, my majors were religion and the Irish language. I then went to a Jesuit secondary school where I learnt other things such as Maths, Latin, Chemistry, and how not to write an opera.

When I was about seven, I wanted very much to be an astronomer. My interest in astronomy, at least as a career, ended around my mid-teens when I had my own telescope and realised that being and astronomer meant a lot of standing around in the cold freezing your hands off. It was around that time that I saw my first pictures of the Mandelbrot set in an article in Scientific American and as you can see from the picture, my life has continued more or less in this direction for the last twenty years.

By the time I entered college, I was sure I wanted to be a mathematician and study fractals and chaos. Like all the rest of my family, I went to University College Dublin where I got my B.Sc. in 1992 and my M.Sc. in 1994. After a student exchange of a few months in Dortmund (which is why I speak a bit of German), I went to the States and Yale University to do a Ph.D. in Mathematics under Professor Peter W. Jones. I was a late developer but eventually I gradauted in 2001. Since then, I've worked in Sweden, California, Paris, and now here at IUB where I am a Research Instructor in Mathematics at the School of Engineering and Science.

I have tried to cram as many of my interests into the picture as I possibly could. The picture on the computer is a Julia set called the Basilica which I'm going to use in a paper I'm just finishing, and which will be instantly recognisable to anyone in complex dynamics, should they ever come across this webpage. I'm very fond of cycling and you can clearly see my Klein Mantra Comp mountain bike which is one of two bikes I have here. The bright orange round thing is one of my four oddballs. Oddballs are sort of spachopper things you can bounce around on, and they make great occasional furniture when I have guests over. Less prominent but nevertheless important and also in the photo are some of my CDs (I'm especially proud of my collection of twentieth-century French organ music) and my books (which range from the childish to the downright pretentious).

So if you're planning a trip to Ireland, are interested in Irish culture or some of the things in the photo, would like a chat, or have just locked yourself out of your room, come over to the end of the C3 corridor or ring me at 5486. I'd be delighted to see you!